■ North Korea
Reactors may be suspended
The executive board of the consortium constructing two light-water nuclear reactors in North Korea has discussed suspending the project -- possibly for a year -- and will make an announcement no later than Nov. 21, officials said. Members of the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization, or KEDO, met in New York on Monday and Tuesday for informal talks, including discussion of the US$4.6 billion project to build two energy-generating reactors in North Korea. "What was discussed at the meeting was suspending the project for one year. Nothing more or nothing less," South Korean Foreign Minister Yoon Young-kwan said in Seoul yesterday. ``This issue has not been officially decided. It was discussed," he said at a weekly briefing.
■ Hong Kong
Japanese encephalitis scare
A 38-year-old Hong Kong woman was seriously ill with Japanese encephalitis yesterday in the first case of the mosquito-born disease in the territory for seven years. The woman from Hong Kong's Yuen Long district near the Chinese border was in intensive care after being admitted with a fever late last month, a Department of Health spokesman said. The case is the first in Hong Kong since 1996, but the spokesman stressed there was no risk of it being passed on as humans were a "dead end" carrier of the disease. Japanese encephalitis is spread by infected mosquitos and has a 30 percent mortality rate. There are between 30,000 and 50,000 cases each year in Asia.
■ Hong Kong
China backs Tung
A top Beijing official reiterated support Wednesday for Hong Kong's unpopular leader Tung Chee-hwa (董建華), and called on the public to help keep society stable. Opposition lawmakers charged that Beijing still failed to see that Tung is the biggest problem facing Hong Kong as it tries to bounce back from troubles including a bad economy. The central government has ramped up its support for Tung ever since a July 1 march by 500,000 people forced him to backtrack on a controversial anti-subversion bill, throwing his government into crisis. But Vice Premier Zeng Peiyan is the first ranking official to deliver a message underpinning Beijing's backing in person since the demonstration, which he didn't directly mention.
■ China
17 firefighters killed
The number of firefighters killed while trying to put out a building fire in southern China has risen to 17 and three others remain missing, the official Xinhua News Agency said yesterday. Sixteen people, including four journalists, were also injured in the blaze in Hengyang, a city in Hunan Province, Xinhua said, without providing more details. The disaster appeared to be one of the deadliest ever suffered by China's firefighters. Paramilitary troops and mine rescue crews were helping to search the ruins of the eight-story building, which caught fire before dawn Monday, the China News Service reported.
■ China
Red envelopes tested
A bride and groom in northern China used an anti-counterfeit scanner at their reception to make sure they were not given fake bank notes as gifts, a news report said yesterday. The couple from Harbin, Heilongjiang, rented the machine for their wedding after hearing stories of tight-fisted guests giving bogus notes as gifts, the South China Morning Post reported.
■ Belgium
Israel is a threat, EU says
Jewish organizations and the EU plan to organize a seminar to find out why most EU citizens consider Israel the main threat to world peace, the European Commission said on Tuesday. A survey published on Monday by the EU executive showed that 59 percent of those polled considered Israel the main threat to peace, closely followed by the US, Iran and North Korea, each with 53 percent. After Israel, the US, Iran and North Korea, 52 percent of those polled said Iraq was a threat and 50 percent said Afghanistan was. The other countries scored less than 50 percent.
■ The Netherlands
Youth arrested for arson
A youth started a fire at the Turkish embassy in the Netherlands on Tuesday during which five people were slightly hurt, a Dutch prosecutor said. Prosecutor Han Moraal said police arrested a 16-year-old youth for the incident, which he said was a personal attack without any terrorist motivation. Moraal, who had earlier identified the suspect as a 26-year-old man, said the injured included the youth suspected of igniting the fire, as well an embassy visitor who had jumped out of a window. Officials said the fire had been extinguished.
■ Iran
Nobel winner to defend
Iranian Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi will represent the family of murdered Canadian photojournalist Zahra Kazemi in criminal proceedings in Iran, a lawyer said on Tuesday. "The court accepted Ebadi's request to defend Kazemi's family during the trial," Mohammad Ali Dadkhah, one of the three lawyers Ebadi will join in the case, said by telephone. Dadkhah said Kazemi's mother asked Ebadi to join the case. Kazemi, a Canadian of Iranian descent, died of a brain haemorrhage in July after her arrest for taking pictures outside Tehran's Evin prison.
■ Georgia
Election results protested
Thousands of opposition supporters marched through the Georgian capital on Tuesday to protest against initial results of a parliamentary poll and demand veteran President Eduard Shevardnadze step down. The crowd of up to 10,000 people, many shouting "Down with Shevardnadze!" and waving national flags, accused the government of rigging the election after initial results put a bloc backing the president in the lead. The election's outcome is seen as an indicator of who may succeed him as president of Georgia, now of key interest to the West with an oil pipeline being built across it to take Caspian oil to the Mediterranean Sea.
■ United States
Hasta la vista, US embargo
Casting itself as the terminator, the US on Tuesday wished Cuba's Fidel Castro "hasta la vista, baby" before a vote in the UN General Assembly on the US embargo against Havana. But Castro won. The assembly voted a record 179 to 3 against Washington's four-decade old trade embargo and travel against Cuba. Angry at the insult to the Cuban president, Havana's Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque shot back: "It is the people of Cuba who say `Hasta la vista to the blockade, Hasta la vista to genocide.'" The annual roasting of the US by friends and adversaries alike was approved for the 12th straight year. Only the US, Israel and the Marshall Islands voted "no" on the resolution.
■ Liberia
UN issues ultimatum
The UN on Tuesday ordered rebels and government fighters to pull back from a volatile frontline in the north of Liberia and end clashes that have threatened a fragile peace deal. "They have been given 48 hours to pull back to the various positions they were in," a spokeswoman in Monrovia said. Reports of fierce clashes in Nimba -- far from the thousands of UN peacekeepers deployed around the capital, Monrovia -- have cast doubt on a peace deal meant to end 14 years of war. The ultimatum came after a UN mission flew to northern Nimba County to check reports of fighting between Liberia's smaller rebel group, known as Model, and government soldiers.
■ United States
David Letterman a dad
Late-night talk-show host David Letterman told his studio audience on Tuesday that he has become a father at the age of 56. Letterman said during taping of The Late Show with David Letterman that his longtime girlfriend, Regina Lasko, had given birth to a boy, Harry Joseph Letterman, just before midnight on Monday. "First thing I took him home and dangled him over the balcony," Letterman said, in joking reference to a stunt last year by Michael Jackson, who horrified German fans by holding his baby son out of a hotel window in Berlin. The Emmy-award winning talk-show host said his 9-pound, 11-ounce baby boy had been named after his own father, who died at the age of 57, adding: "God bless dad and God bless Harry."
■ United States
US tops internet survey
The US and UK governments are best at harnessing the Internet for citizens to learn how government works and take part in policy discussions, a UN study said on Tuesday. The US and Sweden had also invested the most to prepare citizens to use the Internet in dealings with government or in signing up for officially-supplied services, according to the study. While many developing countries did little on either front, Chile, the Philippines, Mexico and Argentina were ahead of many richer powers in providing information and seeking public views on government performance and programs over the Internet.
■ United States
Timberlake the hot tip
With up to one billion pop fans tuning in, Justin Timberlake looks set to cap a memorable year by landing a fistful of MTV awards. The American star, heart-throb to millions of teenage fans, has won both critical and pop chart acclaim for his album Justified and is now in line for four top prizes at Thursday night's MTV Europe Awards. "What Justin has managed to do is have the Holy Grail of maintaining credibility and cool but also have a massive crossover album," said Conor McNicholas, editor of NME.
■ Belgium
Man resuscitates fish
A former Belgian ambulance driver put his first aid skills to good use by reviving one of his pond fish with mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, a newspaper said. Leo Van Aert, 57, was hosting a party at his home near the Belgian port of Antwerp when his wife noticed the koi floating on the surface of the garden pond. Van Aert said the 60cm-long fish was "acting funny," swimming and jumping frantically before stopping dead in the water. He figured the koi had had a heart attack and took it out of the water to try to resuscitate it, giving it heart massages before joining lips with the fish.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing